Surveillance, free speech, student privacy and the Pineapple: Pearson gives parents more reasons to opt out
On Saturday night the news exploded through the Twittersphere via Bob Braun’s blog that Pearson was monitoring student social media. Pearson had sent a warning to the NJ State Education Department, who in turn had contacted the Superintendent of Warren, saying that a student enrolled in the district had posted a picture of one of the PARCC questions on Twitter during the exam. That turned out to be incorrect, according to the Superintendent. Apparently, the student had just commented on the question after taking the test, and deleted his tweet after being contacted by the district. The most disturbing aspect of the incident was not merely Pearson’s error in reporting this to the State Education Department, (how did they get this wrong?) but also their suggestion that the student should be disciplined for this behavior – when it’s not at all clear that he did anything wrong. But parents and others were understandably alarmed that Pearson is monitoring student social media at all.
I don’t mean to minimize the creepiness of this, but I am not surprised. Clearly, Pearson has good reason to defend against its test items being disclosed in advance of students elsewhere taking the PARCC exams, and will use whatever tools at its disposal to do so. But it is somewhat implausible that anyone could imagine that they will be able to achieve this. Given the widespread use of social media and the speed and ease of communication, it is near crazy to imagine that questions given to over five million students in 11 states over the period of several weeks will remain secret for any length of time – or even just during the testing window. According to the PARCC website, since February 16, over two million students have now taken these exams in Arkansas, the District of Columbia, Colorado, Illinois, Ohio, Maryland, Mississippi, New Jersey and New Mexico, with Louisiana, Massachusetts and Rhode Island to start testing soon.
The PARCC/Pearson consortium has also said they refuse to release all of the questions on these exams, a position that is difficult to justify for any assessments in which the stakes for students, teachers and schools are so high. But then those in power always want to maintain maximum secrecy for themselves, and protect what they see is their own privacy rights, whether personal or commercial – while having little or no respect for the privacy of others. Witness how technology CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg maximize their own privacy by asking all their NYC Public School Parents: Surveillance, free speech, student privacy and the Pineapple: Pearson gives parents more reasons to opt out:
